Misquoting Muhammad

Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy …

The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim

A few months ago, I wrote that, as a Muslim and as an American: I support the right of same-sex couples to have civil marriages according to US law. Islam does not approve of same-sex acts, but I don’t believe that the social or religious traditions of any one group should dictate what sort of…

A week ago I was in Sarajevo having a pleasant dinner with some academic colleagues from the university there. One scholar about my age asked my advice on how to be a productive scholar writing while raising young kids. I shared what I’d learned… kids need to sleep, and you need your time to work……

Monday’s bombing in the Saudi city of Medina stands out, even among the wave of terrorist attacks in recent days. It wasn’t the death toll. It didn’t produce the scenes of carnage like Saturday’s bombing in Baghdad that killed nearly 200 people or last week’s attack on the airport in Istanbul that left 44 dead.…

This article was initially published at Al-Medina Institute. In recent days there has been much debate over Islam’s position on homosexuality. Anyone who has read any Persian poetry, read a forthright travel guide to the Gulf or heard Pakistanis or Afghans joking knows that same-sex attraction and activity has not been unusual in Muslim societies.…

Why does the Quran tell us that the Jews claim Ezra (ʿUzayr) is the son of God (Quran 9:30), when Jews do not make this claim or anything approaching it? This is not a question that arose just recently during an interfaith panel. It’s not a new question at all. Even in the ninth century, the Zaydi Imam and renowned scholar al-Qāsim b Ibrāhīm al-Rassī (d. 860 CE), who had studied Jewish and Christian scriptures in Egypt and who had engaged in debates with priests and rabbis, said that he had never encountered a Jew who believed Ezra was the son of God. Nor was this a question that Muslims pondered at ease in the libraries of Baghdad or Cordoba.

One of the reasons I do not to write about early Islamic history is that I find it very difficult to manage the constant clash of faith claims and appeals to empirical evidence. When it comes to religion in general, Islam in particular, and the origins of Islam even more particularly, scholars find it difficult…

Jonathan Brown is the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and he is the Director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding. More →